Sherman L. Fields v. JOHN GILLEY , Warden

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-2762
S HERMAN L. F IELDS ,
Petitioner-Appellant,
v.
JOHN GILLEY , Warden,
Respondent-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Southern District of Indiana, Terre Haute Division.
No. 2:16-cv-418 — James P. Hanlon, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED NOVEMBER 8, 2023 — NOVEMBER 13, 2024
____________________
Before R OVNER , JACKSON -A KIWUMI and PRYOR , Circuit
Judges.
R OVNER , Circuit Judge. Sherman Fields is a federal prisoner
who filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28
U.S.C. § 2241. The district court dismissed the petition, and he
now appeals that determination. The procedural history in
this case leading to the § 2241 petition is a convoluted one,
and we therefore provide a general overview, examining
more closely only the history directly relevant here.

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2 No. 22-2762
In 2001, Fields was in federal custody, on the charge of be-
ing a felon in possession of a firearm, when he bribed a cor-
rectional officer with a $5,000 payment in return for a key to
the detention center’s fire escape. He used that key to escape,
and over the course of several days, he engaged in violent
crimes including the murder of his ex-girlfriend and the car-
jacking of another woman at gunpoint, all with the use of a
firearm. He was arrested and charged with seven counts:
count one—conspiracy to escape from federal custody and to
possess contraband in prison, 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 751, 1791;
count two—escaping from federal custody, 18 U.S.C. § 751;
count three—using and carrying a firearm during and in rela-
tion to escape from federal custody, and conspiracy to escape
from federal custody, both crimes of violence, resulting in in-
tentional murder, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), (j); count four—carjack-
ing, 18 U.S.C. § 2119; count five—using, carrying, and bran-
dishing a firearm during and in relation to carjacking, a crime
of violence, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c); count six—unlawful firearm
possession by a felon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g); and count seven—
using and carrying a firearm (the second gun) during and in
relation to escape from federal custody, a crime of violence,
18 U.S.C. § 924(c).
Because the death penalty was a potential sentence in the
criminal case, the court appointed two attorneys to represent
Fields, Robert T. Swanton and J. Scott Peterson. Shortly before
his criminal trial, Fields filed a request asking the trial court
to appoint new counsel, stating that if the court did not do so
he intended to represent himself. His appointed counsel in-
formed the trial judge that they had tried in vain to convince
Fields that self-representation would be a mistake. They also
informed the court that another issue had arisen concerning
appointed counsel Peterson. They had discovered that in a

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No. 22-2762 3
prosecution of Fields on a burglary of habitation charge when
Fields was twelve years old, an entry in the juvenile record
indicated that Peterson, in his position in the district attor-
ney’s office at the time, authorized prosecution. The juvenile
record did not indicate whether Peterson was actually di-
rectly involved in prosecuting the case or if he merely gave
permission for someone from the police or the probation de-
partment to file a petition, and Peterson had no recollection of
that case. At the point that it was discovered, Peterson had
been representing Fields in his criminal case for two years.
The appointed counsel informed the court that they had
talked with Fields about it and told him that they did not per-
ceive it as a conflict of interest but that if he had concerns
about it he could talk to the court about it. Fields chose to con-
tinue with his request for appointment of new counsel as to
both appointed counsel and the court denied that request.
Fields decided to represent himself, with standby counsel, in
the guilt portion of the trial, but allowed those same ap-
pointed attorneys to represent him during the penalty phase.
He was convicted on all seven counts, and the district court
sentenced him to death on count three and to terms of impris-
onment on the other counts. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the
convictions and sentence on direct appeal.
Fields subsequently pursued collateral relief through mul-
tiple motions under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and the habeas petition
before us under § 2241. The first of these motions under § 2255
raised 49 claims. The district court addressed each of the
claims in a 137-page order and denied both the motion and
certificate of appealability, holding that Fields had failed to
make a substantial showing of a denial of a constitutional
right. Fields then filed a motion to vacate, alter, or amend the
court’s order under Rule 59(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil

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4 No. 22-2762
Procedure. Among other arguments, the Rule 59(e) motion
sought recusal of the district court judge, which the court ad-
dressed on the merits and denied. On appeal, in a more than
40-page opinion, the Fifth Circuit also denied the certificate of
appealability.
In 2015, based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson
v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015), Fields sought leave to file
a second § 2255 motion, but the Fifth Circuit denied him leave.
He then filed a habeas petition under § 2241 in the Southern
District of Indiana where he was imprisoned. The district
court postponed resolution of the habeas petition to await the
Supreme Court’s decisions in Sessions v. Dimaya, 584 U.S. 148
(2018), and United States v. Davis, 588 U.S. 445 (2019). Follow-
ing the Supreme Court’s decision in Davis, the district court
stayed proceedings for the § 2241 habeas petition while Fields
sought leave from the Fifth Circuit to file another § 2255 mo-
tion, which the court granted in part as to the two counts
premised on escape which no longer counted as a “crime of
violence” following Davis. Fields then filed that § 2255 motion
in the Texas district court, and the parties jointly recom-
mended that the court vacate Fields’s convictions as to the
two counts—including the count that had made him eligible
for the death penalty—and agreed that resentencing to life
imprisonment would be appropriate. The court adopted the
agreed resolution, vacating the death sentence and resentenc-
ing him to a term of life on one count and a term of years on
the other surviving counts.
With the § 2255 motions resolved, the Indiana district
court handling the § 2241 habeas petition then returned to its
consideration of the unresolved claims. The court held that it

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No. 22-2762 5
could not reach the merits of the claims raised in a § 2241 pe-
tition without first finding that the claims fall under the safety
valve provision in § 2255(e), requiring a finding that § 2255 is
“inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of the deten-
tion.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Of the eight claims that remained in
the § 2241 petition, the district court held that many of them
had already been litigated in his § 2255 appeal, and that Fields
had failed to make a compelling showing that it would be im-
possible to use § 2255 to cure a fundamental problem. Accord-
ingly, the court concluded that Fields failed to demonstrate
that § 2255 was inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of
the claim as required in § 2255(e) before a § 2241 habeas peti-
tion can be pursued, and the court dismissed the § 2241 peti-
tion.
On appeal, Fields argues that the district court erred in
concluding that he could not proceed under § 2241. This ap-
peal, therefore, involves the interplay between § 2241, the
general habeas corpus statute, and § 2255, the alternative
postconviction remedy for federal prisoners. The Supreme
Court recently clarified that relationship in Jones v. Hendrix,
599 U.S. 465, 469–70 (2023). As the Jones Court noted, § 2255
was enacted to minimize the serious administrative problems
that arose in processing federal prisoners’ collateral attacks on
their sentences through habeas proceedings. Id. at 473–74.
Those habeas proceedings were filed in the judicial districts
in which the prisoners were confined, and the districts of con-
finement for federal prisoners were often a great distance
from the needed evidence and records in the sentencing
courts. Id. Those “difficulties were ‘greatly aggravated’ by the
concentration of federal prisoners in a handful of judicial dis-
tricts, which forced those District Courts to process ‘an inor-
dinate number of habeas corpus actions.’” Id. at 474 (quoting

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6 No. 22-2762
United States v. Hayman, 342 U.S. 205, 213–14 (1952)). Section
2255 directed federal prisoners’ collateral attacks to the courts
that had sentenced them, alleviating that problem. Id. With
the exception of narrow circumstances set forth in a saving
clause, it “barred federal prisoners authorized to apply for re-
lief by motion pursuant to § 2255 from applying for a writ of
habeas corpus under § 2241.” Id. (internal quotation marks
omitted). That saving clause allowed federal prisoners to pro-
ceed under § 2241 in cases where the remedy by motion under
§ 2255 is “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of [that
prisoner’s] detention.” § 2255(e). In addition, § 2255 provided
that a federal prisoner could only pursue a second or succes-
sive motion if that successive motion was certified by a panel
of the appropriate court of appeals to contain “(1) newly dis-
covered evidence that, if proven and viewed in light of the
evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by clear
and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder would
have found the movant guilty of the offense; or (2) a new rule
of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral
review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavaila-
ble.” § 2255(h); Hogsett v. Lillard, 72 F.4th 819, 820–21 (7th Cir.
2023).
The Supreme Court also provided clarity as to how to in-
terpret the language in the saving clause. In ascertaining
whether § 2255 was “inadequate or ineffective to test the le-
gality of a prisoner’s detention,” the Court held that the sav-
ing clause “preserves recourse to § 2241 in cases where unu-
sual circumstances make it impossible or impracticable to
seek relief in the sentencing court, as well as for challenges to
detention other than collateral attacks on a sentence.” Jones,
599 U.S. at 478. The Court noted that “[t]he clearest such cir-
cumstance is the sentencing court’s dissolution; a motion in a

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No. 22-2762 7
court that no longer exists is obviously ‘inadequate or ineffec-
tive’ for any purpose.” Id. at 474. The Court rejected the argu-
ment, however, that § 2255 is necessarily “inadequate or inef-
fective” if the § 2255 court failed to apply the correct substan-
tive law. That argument would allow resort to § 2241 to cor-
rect errors in substantive law, even though only errors of con-
stitutional dimension could support a successive § 2255 mo-
tion. It would allow prisoners to use § 2241 as an end-run
around the limitations of successive § 2255 motions in the stat-
ute, rendering the § 2255(h) limitations meaningless. The
Court held that “the saving clause is concerned with the ade-
quacy or effectiveness of the remedial vehicle (‘the remedy by
motion’), not any court’s asserted errors of law.” Id. at 480–81
(emphasis in original). Thus, “[e]ven when ‘circuit law is inad-
equate or deficient’ because a Court of Appeals’ precedents
have resolved a legal issue incorrectly, that is not a fault in
‘the § 2255 remedial vehicle’ itself.” (emphasis in original) Id.
at 481.
As set forth above, Fields has already sought relief under
§ 2255, and he does not now argue that his claims involve
newly discovered evidence of innocence or a new rule of con-
stitutional law made retroactive which would support a suc-
cessive § 2255 motion. Instead, he argues that he can pursue
habeas relief under § 2241 because a motion under § 2255 is
inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.
Although he pursues nine claims in this § 2241 petition, he
argues that the safety valve standard of § 2255 is met by one
claim—a claim that the judge who presided over the trial was
biased. He claims that the judge’s handling of his potential
conflict with his trial counsel and his request for new repre-
sentation indicates that bias. Moreover, he claims that subse-
quent evidence emerged as to the judge, including that the

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8 No. 22-2762
judge was later reprimanded for making sexual advances to-
wards judicial employees and allowing false assertions to be
made in response to those complaints, as well as failing to
avoid conflicts of interest in the sexual misconduct investiga-
tion. He asserts that those allegations relate directly to the
judge’s honesty, integrity and impartiality.
Fields argues that, by rule, § 2255 motions are assigned to
the judge who presided over a trial, and therefore a § 2255
proceeding is inadequate and ineffective to test the legality of
his claim of bias. He urges us to find that the bias allegation is
not cognizable in a successive § 2255 motion based on a struc-
tural error in § 2255 because: (1) the initial § 2255 motion
would be considered by the same biased judge; and (2) even
if a successive petition would have gone to a different judge,
such a successive § 2255 motion was unavailable because he
could not meet the standard in § 2255(h)(1) for a successive
motion based on new evidence, which requires that the evi-
dence as a whole would be sufficient to establish by clear and
convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder would
have found him guilty of the offense.
As to the first argument, Fields has failed to demonstrate
that his § 2255 claim of judicial bias would be considered by
the same allegedly-biased judge. A § 2255 motion is referred
to the judge who conducted the trial and imposed the sen-
tence if that judge is available, but the movant can file an affi-
davit of bias and seek reassignment to another judge. See
Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings for the United
States District Courts Rule 4 and Advisory Committee Notes
to that Rule. Moreover, if the trial judge refuses to grant that
motion, the movant has the right of appellate review of that
determination. Id. Fields in fact sought recusal of the judge on

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No. 22-2762 9
the grounds of bias in the course of his § 2255 proceedings, in
a motion under Rule 59(e) to vacate, alter, or amend the
court’s order denying the § 2255 motion and the certificate of
appealability. The district court judge addressed the recusal
claim on the merits and denied it. He subsequently pursued a
similar claim in the Fifth Circuit against an appellate court
judge, arguing in his appeal of the dismissal of his § 2255 mo-
tion that one of the circuit judges should be disqualified from
hearing the appeal based on alleged racial and other bias. The
Fifth Circuit denied that motion and denied the request for
full court review. Therefore, Fields presented claims of bias in
his § 2255 motions which were denied on the merits. Because
§ 2255 provides a procedure for adjudicating a claim of bias
and for remedying such a situation, there is no structural
problem that renders § 2255 inadequate or ineffective to test
the legality of that claim.
Fields also asserts that § 2255 has a “structural problem”
that renders it unavailable as a remedy because his claim of
judicial bias does not fall within the two categories of claims
that can be pursued in a successive § 2255 motion. He argues
that although his claim of judicial bias undermines the integ-
rity of a conviction and sentence, it would not necessarily es-
tablish “by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable
factfinder would have found the movant guilty of the of-
fense,” as is necessary under § 2255(h) to pursue a successive
§ 2255 motion. But that inability to meet the standards for a
successive § 2255 motion is not sufficient to render § 2241 re-
lief available.
The Supreme Court in Jones squarely rejected the argu-
ment that the failure to meet the standards for a successive

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10 No. 22-2762
motion would render the proceedings inadequate and inef-
fective and allow resort to § 2241 for such claims, holding:
Here, as often is the case, the best interpretation
is the straightforward one. Section 2255(h) spec-
ifies the two limited conditions in which Con-
gress has permitted federal prisoners to bring
second or successive collateral attacks on their
sentences. The inability of a prisoner with a stat-
utory claim to satisfy those conditions does not
mean that he can bring his claim in a habeas pe-
tition under the saving clause. It means that he
cannot bring it at all. Congress has chosen final-
ity over error correction in his case.
Jones, 599 U.S. at 480. Therefore, the inability to assert a judi-
cial bias claim in a successive § 2255 motion does not render
§ 2241 available.
The district court properly held that under the provisions
of § 2255, Fields could not pursue his claims in a habeas peti-
tion under § 2241 and dismissed the petition. See Hogsett, 72
F.4th at 821–22 (noting that where § 2255(e) forecloses the pos-
sibility of filing a § 2241 habeas petition, the court cannot con-
sider the petition on the merits and should dismiss the peti-
tion for lack of subject matter jurisdiction).
The decision of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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